PLAYSTATION GAME RECOMMENDATIONS |

[#] Williams' Arcade Greatest Hits (Williams, PlayStation, 1996)

Who says history is boring?

Williams' Arcade Greatest Hits screenshot 1

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I've been impressed as hell with these Digital Eclipse arcade comps this summer, and if you wanna know where it started, try right here. After some time applying their trade to IBM compatibles, Digital Eclipse turned their attention to the PlayStation (and the Saturn, and the SNES, and the Genesis), compiling a tight six of Williams' early arcade titles into one hyper-accurate emulation package filled with written history and highly illuminating video interviews with the devs behind them. Joust, Defender, Defender II, Robotron: 2084--these need zero introduction, but I'll give it a go anyway. (Sinistar and Bubbles do, but we'll get to them later.)

Williams' 80s coin-ops are distinguished by their intense difficulty and their unique control schemes (which, save for Robotron's dual sticks, all map nicely to the PlayStation digital pad). Robotron litters the screen with homicidal robots charging after you and helpless flocks of humans. Defender does the same with aliens on the horizontal axis. Joust is a war of bird ass as you try to land on other ostrich riders and likewise in a big open ominous cavern. Doubted all throughout their development (before release, Defender was thought to be an also-ran next to Namco's Rally-X and then went on to sell ten times the amount of units), they'd actually spawn entire genres in their wake. Again, this disc compiles them all with pitch-perfect emulation, customizable control schemes, and a ton of per-game settings.

As is customary for digging into these packs, I found a new fixation in the games I wasn't as familiar with. While I wasn't really taken by Sinistar, a slippery and overly-fast resource extraction overhead shooter, Bubbles proved bizarrely addictive and highly memorable. Think of it like a prototype Katamari, as your bubble grows larger the more soap scum, dirt, and bugs you scoop up, until you can knock giant spiders and scrub brushes back down the plughole where they belong. Again, it's odd, but it totally works. About the worst I can say about this comp is that you have to be vigilant about saving your scores, since there's no autosave. If that's the worst I can come up with, then it's safe to say we have another winner on our hands.

Recommended for... arcade brains looking for something stronger than Dig Dug.